That's apparently what happened in the case of Jacob's Ladder, a strange and serious horror film about an American soldier who served in Vietnam. Before Full Metal Jacket, In Country, Born on the Fourth of July and the other Vietnam movies that followed in the wake of Platoon (1986), its screenplay may have seemed a lot fresher than it does now. In fact, the movie's themes - which include governmental abuses, battles among American soldiers and post-war stress - probably seemed revolutionary in the early '80s.

Today, the only fresh thing about Jacob's Ladder is the oblique way it approaches those themes. Its early sections promise a dark, sensual meditation about the horrors of Vietnam, the sort of film that might have brought to a triumphant close the recent cycle of movies about the war in Southeast Asia. But the spell the movie casts, while initially entrancing, soon loses much of its power.

It's hard to describe the plot accurately without blowing the surprises. Loosely speaking, then, the movie focuses on a Vietnam veteran named Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) who has begun to see demons lurking in corners and to have flashbacks to his combat days. Jacob is also plagued by memories of his ex-wife and children - especially one child who died.

Jacob's Ladder was written by Bruce Joel Rubin, who only was recently catapulted to prominence by the phenomenal success of his romantic adventure film, Ghost. The new movie is the first to be directed by Adrian Lyne since his 1987 hit thriller, Fatal Attraction.

Even if the themes of Jacob's Ladder were fresher, the movie has another big problem that might in itself have been insurmountable. Lyne and Rubin have put so much effort into the film's shadowy atmosphere and clever structure that they somehow forgot to make its main character sympathetic.

It's not that Jacob, as played by Tim Robbins (Bull Durham), is unsympathetic exactly. With his bright smile, long limbs and mop of hair, the character has the look of a tall, shaggy elf.

But the intentionally mysterious way that the movie's story is structured makes it hard to know all that much about Jacob's personality. As far as we can see, he's just this basically inoffensive person who may or may not be hallucinating a lot of the time. Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), his put-upon girlfriend, or even Louis (Danny Aiello), his take-charge chiropractor, make more direct contact with the audience in their scenes than Jacob does in his.

Without a strongly sympathetic figure at the center of the movie, Jacob's plight seems very remote. Watching this film should feel like being caught in a nightmare, but it feels more like watching someone else who is caught in a nightmare.

This ambitious motion picture isn't crass or exploitative, and that's certainly a relief. But it's one thing to create a refined horror movie, and it's quite another to create a horror movie that leaves out the horror.

Jacob's Ladder may have made American Film's 10-best list of unproduced screenplays, but it won't make anyone's 10-best list of produced movies.